Just checking in to see what you all are up to.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.
It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.
“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”
Fight them, without becoming them!
Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.
“But what about the lurkers?”
Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.
Giving up is unforgivable. ~Joe Biden
Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?
We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.
Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.
A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.
Technically true, but collectively nonsense
“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”
Optimism opens the door to great things.
Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.
Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!
You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.
with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.
It looks like winning debates is a black job!
The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris
Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.
War for Ukraine Day 1,039: Relationships Matter, Personalities Matter, & Personnel Is Policy
scav
Hiding.
Joy in FL
Making art, as in arts and crafts. All day. It’s been very pleasant. Person of Interest has been playing in the background.
Trivia Man
In a shocking turn of events, i found myself enjoying a BYU victory tonight.
SpaceUnit
Watching college football. I’m in Colorado but I was glad to see CU get spanked. Deon Sanders is a doofus.
The Iowa State v Miami game was epic.
trollhattan
Friends flocking to kid for her Bday cele. Olds entertain before they launch into the Big City for Frolic.
Does it get better? It does not. Taa, must perform now. Hope as many return as left.
Jerry
Just watched the first episode of The Agency. It was good.
West of the Rockies
My wife and I (and our sheepadoodle Sadie) are spending a romantic weekend in Grass Valley, a fun and picturesque town along the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Uh, Sadie is not part of the romance, just to clarify.
RevRick
Getting my schedule for doctor and church-related events in my 2025 desk calendar. Also added in the dates for our Allentown Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Symphony concerts. Watched a couple of episodes of “The Gilded Age and Progressive Era” on Great Courses+. Fun factoid: at one point in the early 20th century the Socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason had the highest circulation in America!
tisalaska
Trip across a frozen lake to the family cabin where the sound of the crackling fire is about it for noise. Peaceful as hell.
Trivia Man
@SpaceUnit: I think it is bush league to stay in until you break the record… then bail on the team the rest of the game. Glad Miami lost, but having the starter in on the last drive would have been better.
Trivia Man
@RevRick: and Milwaukee elected a socialist mayor.
SpaceUnit
@Trivia Man:
Agree. Ward was totally classless.
Poe Larity.
Am still 72”
mvr
@Joy in FL:
I used to kind of like that show back when I went through a few years of watching TV. My spouse was watching in the living room and I got sucked into watching The Good Wife. From there my TV watching crept to The Mentalist, and from there to Person of Interest. And then my TV watching winked out as these went away. Good thing too, I think. I got more done when I didn’t watch TV.
But anyway, that show had a strange charm that I don’t completely understand. It’s not like the characters were warm and fuzzy. But I did find it engaging when it ran.
Nukular Biskits
Sitting out tornado warnings.
kalakal
Playing guitar
@Nukular Biskits: Warnings not watches? Stay safe
hitchhiker
spent the day with the grandkids, which involved (this time) 3 ferry rides.
one to get off the island, two to get back on because the ride we would normally take home was cancelled … big driftwood in the channel that they couldn’t move before dark fell. when that happens we have to drive for 45 minutes to get another ferry, then cross the sound and drive another 40 minutes to reach the last one.
i love this place so much.
grandkids are:
boy/girl twins who will turn 4 on jan 6th … yes, they were born during the assault on the capitol, before there were covid vaccines. they were a wild fucking ride for a year or so.
their cousin who came along 11 months later, which means he just turned 3.
we’re well out of the diaper phase and solidly into WATCH HOW FAST I CAN RUN and READ ME THIS BOOK and LET’S PLAY GO FISH AGAIN … it’s glorious in every way.
West of the Rockies
@tisalaska:
Sounds lovely. Any good company, snacks or beverages?
Nukular Biskits
@kalakal:
Yup. Warning. Nasty stuff moving through the area.
Just got NWS warning on the phone.
Sister Golden Bear
Edibles and nerdy YouTube videos.
mvr
But as for what I’m doing today, it has been rearranging books in my house, after building some more shelves to fit one of the few spaces in my shop that still has room. This has been going on for days. We have about a dozen sets of stacking barrister bookcases acquired over years of garage saling and hitting antique and junk shops, along with other sets I’ve made. And they are all full.
Another reason I can’t retire (other than that my retirement is going to shrink when Trump wrecks the economy). There are another seven floor to ceiling bookshelves full in my office at work. The ones at home are fiction (mostly but not only mysteries), music (blues, pop, r’n’r & Jazz), woodworking, metalworking, housebuilding and renovation/restoration, flyfishing, some history, vacuum tube electronics, and oddball stuff, much of it from bygone times. I’m a nut with too many hobbies. And the books have gotten out of hand.
Peke Daddy
Watching Terence McKenna and Marshall McLuhan lectures.
kalakal
@Nukular Biskits: Hope it does no harm. I hate getting those messages
TaMara
Got some good writing in today and now working tonight – getting a jump on the January onslaught of pre-tax prep for my clients.
Also, perusing the local marketplaces for a (hopefully) good find on a queen-sized bedframe. May have found a nice antique that matches most of the other (late 20s – early 30s) bedroom furniture, if it’s still available. Fingers-crossed.
Nukular Biskits
@kalakal:
Based on NWS radar, the worst has passed through … for now.
Looks like we’ll get another visit from Mother Nature around midnight tonight.
TaMara
@Nukular Biskits: Well, yikes. Means rough weather, regardless. Stay safe.
We’ll be under extreme fire danger tomorrow with winds…we are all nervous.
Nukular Biskits
@TaMara:
Saw this on Bluesky … pretty much rings true:
Redshift
Anniversary dinner tonight (actually out, in a restaurant!)
This afternoon I was out canvassing for the special election to ensure the Dems retain our majority in the VA State Senate. Especially important since Youngkin, unsurprisingly, is showing eagerness to inflict on us whatever the hell Trump gets into his addled pate.
pieceofpeace
@Peke Daddy: Link please, thanks.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Spent the evening downtown, started at Union Station for a drink, then dinner nearby, then walked to the Civic Center for lights. Then a “stroll” down Colfax home.
mrmoshpotato
Liberty Mutual is a pile of shit that promotes beastiality.
mrmoshpotato
@tisalaska: Excellent.
SiubhanDuinne
@mrmoshpotato:
Emus represent!
H.E.Wolf
My grandfather’s study had those. I can vividly recall the aroma of old paper and pipe tobacco, and the tactile pleasure of lifting open the glass door of a shelf, to retrieve a book.
Wonderful memory! Thanks for recalling it to mind this evening.
mvr
@H.E.Wolf: I know what you mean. Opening an old book has something like that for me as well.
KrackenJack
Getting in some exercise before the year end and resuscitating my bread starter for a New Year’s rustic loaf. KrackenJill still thinks I’m a loon for taking three days to make a loaf of bread. She can thank Ken Forkish and his Flour Water Salt Yeast for that. She’ll get a KAF Sourdough Banana Bread and maybe some English muffins along the way to ease the pain.
Botched both my last two bakes (rustic loaf and lemon pound cake). Need to pay more attention and not do math in my head anymore. <Sigh>
VFX Lurker
Earlier today, I took some friends to see the Micro Center in Tustin, California. Computer heaven. It was their first time seeing this wonderful store, and they loved it.
One called it “a better Fry’s [Electronics].”
KatKapCC
@mrmoshpotato: @SiubhanDuinne: I think I am missing some crucial context to this exchange.
Melancholy Jaques
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
What downtown is that?
FastEdD
Got a good pair of stereo speakers for myself and I’m losing myself in music again. I close my eyes and I’m front row at a concert from 60 years ago. I’m right there. Transported out of here. The next morning the sound still lingers in my brain. Politics, news, obnoxious people, gone. I’m not even high, just lost in sound. Beautiful, pure sweet sound.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Melancholy Jaques:
Denver.
Melancholy Jaques
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Never been. Plan to visit this spring on a baseball tour.
dr. luba
Writing my annual letter. No point in referring to it as a Xmas letter any more. New Year’s cards have been ready for weeks, but a virus knocked me off my ass and I am about 2 weeks behind on most things…….
And reading about fossil history.
Kayla Rudbek
@VFX Lurker: that’s heresy, Fry’s was better than Micro Center back in the day.
NotMax
Trying my darndest to ignore the two notches too loud crappy music being played at next door neighbor’s outdoor party which is seeping through the walls tonight.
VFX Lurker
@Kayla Rudbek: They must have gotten better! We shopped at the Burbank Fry’s for years before it closed, and we only started shopping at the Micro Center in Tustin last November.
The current Micro Center is a miniature Akihabara district. It’s amazeballs.
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne: No. He’s a creepy bitch who is having sex with that emu. Creepy bitchass beastiality-promoting insurance company.
Kayla Rudbek
And I am looking over at Just Knitting on Blue Sky and adding more projects to my Ravelry queue which probably will never actually get knitted (I just came to the sad realization that at the rate I currently knit, it would take me 90 years to finish everything in my queue). Someone did a pattern for a Greek amphora cardigan which I saw over on Bluesky https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/greek-amphora-cardi
I am seriously considering making this other cardigan https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/balliemore if I can get the yarn at fibre space. I plan on substituting some shade of yellow for the pink as ironically enough for a breast cancer survivor, most shades of pink look absolutely awful on me now. Most yellows don’t flatter me either, but I will probably enlist the help of the employees and other customers to help me with the decision.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
On the other hand, the “Libidi Bibidi” ad was an instant classic.
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War
when Emu’s attack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQM_MyoIZ0c
ceece
I’m trapped at home until the grading is done. Hopefully by Monday?
who assigns all this stuff anyway? Oh….
NotMax
@Jay
Don’t take an emu to the market.
:)
beckya57
@RevRick: another Great Courses junkie! Awesome!
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: I hope so! Also, you can still take back Shithead Ted. It’s an open offer.
NotMax
@beckya57
Some libraries include free access to Great Courses as a perq of having a library card there.
Jay
@NotMax:
Back atcha,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3De6sBNyoq8
How to Groom an Emu.
beckya57
Playing ukulele and watching too much football. Hoping to ski tomorrow, but we’ve actually been getting too much snow here in the PNW (yes I know that sounds weird coming from a skier)—bad driving conditions and avalanche risks. Getting ready to go to a music retreat tomorrow through New Year’s: playing, chatting and eating, not necessarily in that order.
mrmoshpotato
@ceece: Roads, school papers, or ass shaking like holy moly?
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
Too late, you can keep Musk too, oh and Jordan Peterson.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Perk.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: We’ll eventually launch them home on BitchassX, and then let NASA reclaim its throne.
Jay
@beckya57:
Groomed resorts should be okay, backcountry, big nope.
currawong
It’s been a beautiful day down here on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria. Freya, our newish rescue dog got me up at 5am so we had a 2 hour walk around and watched the sunrise. I them nipped out early to Bunnings to get a hedge trimmer so I could cut back some unruly grasses and shrubs. watched a bit of cricket, a bit of the Rams game and took Freya out for another walk along part of the Bellarine Rail Trail this afternoon. Nice and quiet as she’s still very nervous around people. It’s lovely to be out in the countryside.
I’d like to take her down to the beach but it’s peak holiday time here and would be far too crowded for her and she probably wouldn’t get out of the car.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Nope. Unless you’re talking Maxwell House.
/pedant ;)
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
Yeah, Jordan Peterson fled the persecution of the socialist hellhole that is Canada, for Phoenix Az.
It’s unclear if he has applied for asylum, has a H1B from Praeger U or is just another illegal.
SomeRandomGuy
Me, personally, I’m (the following has been elided because no one wants to hear that crap anyway. Plus, dark as F, during an eclipse, in the dead of night. There are also misspellins.)
Anyway, other than that, life has been *fine*.
TBone
Fantasy role play with Chinchilla (punching Nazis)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gnPKYVkK_iA
ceece
@mrmoshpotato: papers, although road grading sounds more interesting at this point!
Jay
What ever happened to that Drone Panic thing?
TBone
@Jay: it broke like the wind
petered out
Jay
@TBone:
So it was just a bad case of public gas?
Weren’t UFO’s dismissed as gas bubbles?
Was it Gaslighting?
Moulder and Scully should get on this, stat.
ColoradoGuy
It’s like there’s a big knob at FoxNews marked “Idiocracy” and they turn it up and down just for giggles.
Tehanu
Finished Barbara Hambly’s latest Hollywood-in-the-1920s mystery, Saving Susy Sweetchild. I also just a few days back read her latest Benjamin January mystery, Death and Hard Cider — the only books I can stand to read about the antebellum South, with the sole exception of Huckleberry Finn, and all of them just wonderful.
NotMax
@ColoradoGuy
Any number of big knobs at Fox.
And I don’t mean dials.
:)
bjacques
Bopping through ’Taintmas. Saw off a friend from my hometown and his missus and daughter after showing them around Amsterdam. Gave my spare copy of The Master And Margarita to the daughter so she wouldn’t run out of reading material on the train to Brugge and then Paris.
raven
Big ass storm rolling through and Artemis is not happy to delay her dog park visit!
JPL
@raven: I woke at 3 and saw what was coming our way and decided to wake the dog and take him out. Lots of power outages but GA Power has been doing a good job getting people back online.
Geminid
I’ve been reading Middle East news. Again. Conditions are still very grim in Gaza, with no ceasefire in sight.
There was some good news from Syria, though. There’s still a lot of tension in the Northeast, and some fighting. Hanging over this has been the question of the future status of the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces and the Kurdish YPG militia that is its core fighting force.
Apparently the new government and the SDF have reached some sort of agreement, at least in principle. From Ragip Soylu:
The last is a key demand from Turkiye, which claims the YPG is an affiliate of the PKK which has waged a 40 year insurgency* against the Turkish state, and insists that it must be disarmed and disbanded.
* There was also news yesterday about the PKK and Turkiye that could be very consequential. I will cover it below.
rikyrah
Hey Cole🤗
Nelle
@kalakal: Hate getting the message and grateful for the service.
bjacques
@Geminid: please do. It would be nice for the Kurds to catch a break.
prostratedragon
@Jay: Oooh, my that’s funny!
Geminid
@Geminid: In October Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the ultra-nationalist MH Party, made a bombshell speech in Turkiye’s Nationsl Assembly where he called for a settlement of Turkiye’s 40 year war with the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK. Bahceli is President Erdogan’s coalition partner and it was assumed Erdogan approved this message.
Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s fojnder, has been imprisoned on an island in the Marmara Sea* west of Istanbul since 1999. He’d recently been allowed his first visit from familiy in years, with a nephew who is a National Assembly member for the DEM Party.
This Friday two DEM met with Ocalan for some hours. They then released a statement from him yesterday. From Ragip Soylu:
Soylu provides Ocalan’s statement in full. It’s long, but it’s worth reading (or at least typing out) because it could very consequential. The PKK’s insurgency and Turkiye’s efforts to suppress it have cost 40,000 lives since 1984, and the underlying questions regarding Kurdish rights date back to the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923.
Ocalan’s statement:
Ocalan calls for a political process within Turkiye, and places it in the context of events in the larger region:
This could prove to be a major event and Ocalan’s statement will be widely reported and commented upon. Among others the Middle East Eye should carry at least one article, likely written by Ragip Soylu who is their Istanbul bureau chief
* The Sea of Marmara was called Propontus back in the day (the Black Sea was called Pontus). Jason and his Argonauts sailed through the Sea of Marmara while on their way to the gold fields of Colchis accross the Black Sea. They camped on Island that might be the one where Abdullah Ocalan has lived in captivity for 25 years.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Melancholy Jaques:
You probably won’t see this but I’ll try to remember to ping you in another thread.
I live 10 minutes by bike from Coors Field and love going to games (Nats fan, don’t care about the Rockies but love going to games).
Sounds like another chance for a meetup!